Books

Lost Souls records Lena Herzog's journey into a world rarely seen by outsiders: cabinets of wonder and curiosities (Kunstkammern and Wunderkammern) that include the world's earliest medical museums, where oddities have been closely guarded for centuries.
Established in the early eighteenth century, Russia's first Kunstkammer triggered a profound debate over religious and existential questions. The Orthodox Church, faced with a collection of Cyclopes, Siamese twins, and creatures that looked like lions or leprechauns, could not justify nature's unsuccessful attempts at human life and deemed their souls lost: they could not go to heaven, hell, or limbo—they were dead on arrival and had nowhere to go.
Herzog was granted access to the Wunderkammern around the world and has photographed the mysteries with a sense of beauty, wonder, and tenderness. Her subjects are mostly infants born with genetic defects that prevented their survival, and although they have been preserved as scientific specimens—some for hundreds of years—they are profoundly transformed through Herzog's lens into beings that mirror our own fears and existential dilemmas.
Herzog follows this portrait gallery of sorrows with images of the skeletons and bones of various creatures—both warm- and cold-blooded—and continues the journey with views of some of the unusual subjects on display in the curiosity cabinets. The final section, "The Mice Orchestra, or The Rhapsody of Death," shows a diabolically witty scene, an actual nineteenth-century installation from the Anatomical Museum of Leiden University Medical Center, which has been hidden in the museum's storage for years.
Herzog uses a combination of unique processes for developing her negatives and printing her photographs, resulting in images with tonal subtleties, palpable textures, and superb clarity and resonance. This book reproduces the prints that Herzog exhibited at the International Center of Photography in New York in 2010.

Originally published in a large-format limited edition of seven copies, "To Whom It May Concern" pairs Louise Bourgeois' luminous male and female torsos with Gary Indiana's prose poems in a meditation on physicality, sexuality and relationships. Violette's publication reproduces this artist's book--one of the last projects Bourgeois completed before her death in 2010--in a reduced, collectible format. Bourgeois' headless bodies, printed en face in erotic standoff, represent male and female at their essential: swollen bellies, heavy breasts and engorged phalluses, all rendered in rich pinks, purples, reds and blues. Indiana's short, visceral but lyrical texts are interspersed throughout in an electric blue typewriter font, conversing with these images through an unconventional non-narrative on the limits of flesh, desire and intimacy. Simple and elegant in design, and exquisitely printed, "To Whom It May Concern" throbs with stripped-down eroticism and the sensualities of image and language juxtaposed.

As it was in "Anna Karenina," "Madame Bovary" and "Othello," so it is in life. Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption—even murder and genocide—generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie.
In "Lying," best-selling author and neuroscientist Sam Harris argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie. He focuses on "white" lies—those lies we tell for the purpose of sparing people discomfort—for these are the lies that most often tempt us. And they tend to be the only lies that good people tell while imagining that they are being good in the process.

A riveting and unsettling history of the assault on civil rights and liberties in America—from World War I to the war on terror—by the acclaimed author of "When the Mississippi Ran Backwards."
In this ambitious and wide-ranging account, Jay Feldman takes us from the runup to World War I and its anti-German hysteria to the 9/11 attacks and Arizona’s current anti-immigration movement. What we see is a striking pattern of elected officials and private citizens alike using the American people’s fears and prejudices to isolate minorities (ethnic, racial, political, religious, or sexual), silence dissent, and stem the growth of civil rights and liberties. Rather than treating this history as a series of discrete moments, Feldman considers the entire programmatic sweep on a scale no one has yet approached. In doing so, he gives us a potent reminder of how, even in America, democracy and civil liberties are never guaranteed.

Culturally, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were light-years apart. Yet they were nearly the same age and almost the same size, and they came to New York at the same time. They possessed virtually the same talents and played the same position. They were both products of generations of baseball-playing families, for whom the game was the only escape from a lifetime of brutal manual labor. Both were nearly crushed by the weight of the outsized expectations placed on them, first by their families and later by America. Both lived secret lives far different from those their fans knew. What their fans also didn't know was that the two men shared a close personal friendship--and that each was the only man who could truly understand the other's experience.

Celebrated scholar Carla Kaplan’s cultural biography, Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, focuses on white women, collectively called “Miss Anne,” who became Harlem Renaissance insiders.
The 1920s in New York City was a time of freedom, experimentation, and passion—with Harlem at the epicenter. White men could go uptown to see jazz and modern dance, but women who embraced black culture too enthusiastically could be ostracized.
Miss Anne in Harlem focuses on six of the unconventional, free-thinking women, some from Manhattan high society, many Jewish, who crossed race lines and defied social conventions to become a part of the culture and heartbeat of Harlem.
Ethnic and gender studies professor Carla Kaplan brings the interracial history of the Harlem Renaissance to life with vivid prose, extensive research, and period photographs.

Have you been asked, "what nationality are you" or "what country are you from"?
Have you been puzzled when forms tell you to "select only one ethnicity"?
Have you been disturbed to hear that you’re the "face of a colorblind future"?
If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, this book is for you.

How to make any wedding liberating, brave, and sexy.
This post-DOMA book is for any couple--same or opposite sex--seeking a personalized wedding that dignifies the relationship and the individual self. No "new normal" here--this guide emboldens you to harness your unique, brazen, queer truth; to be creative; and to plan your wedding your way.
Every fiancé faces the question: How do I become something new without losing myself? Using his own story--from how he and his husband connected via MTV's The Real World to the real world of their marriage--author Mark O'Connell reflects on conflicts that arrive during wedding transitions, as well as various other transitions throughout your lives.
As a psychotherapist, O'Connell offers ideas to bridge relational gaps with your partner, family, and friends. As a professional actor, he also offers insight into the ways your wedding is a theatrical production: how this can help you to conceptualize the event, consolidate your efforts, and increase creative collaboration as a couple. This will serve you not only on the day, but also for the rest of your time together.
Whether we're straight, gay, or other, weddings inspire us to carve out more fun, freedom, recognition, life-space, love-space, and connubial space than we've ever had before.